One in Four Women: My Pregnancy Loss Story
January 2023, just after my 36th birthday. I’m sitting on a quiet hilltop in an ancient forest in the Scottish Highlands, looking out across an expansive valley, snow-capped mountains and four shimmering lakes. I’m thinking about what’s changed since I was last here a year ago, and what else might change this year. I’m excited but a little nervous because in a few days, I’ll travel to Mexico alone for a breathwork and meditation retreat called Awakening Through Trauma*. I’ve spoken to my boyfriend Matt about how I want to take this opportunity for personal growth, and adventure, before I might become a parent at some point down the line. I’ve written that feeling like a bad person is holding me back in life; I want the trip to help me come back to myself and love myself more. I’ve also lived in an anxious body since childhood and have recently been diagnosed with ADHD, so I want the retreat’s somatic processing element to teach me how to become physically liberated and lighter somehow. To let go of old stories and hurt I hold deep within my cells. How different it will feel this time next week, going from the biting ice-cold of winter and swimming in frozen lochs, to exploring the jungle and needing sunscreen in 30-degree heat. Sunscreen… If you know the song, you’ll know that Baz Luhrrman says ‘The real troubles in your life are actually things that never cross your worried mind…the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.’
Ten months, two retreats and a *lot* of spiritual and emotional healing later, I’ve learned valuable new tools for overcoming the past and breaking generational patterns. I’ve supported people from around the world in their own pain and expansion, qualifying as a breathwork and somatic healing facilitator. I’ve grown as a person, and recently started to grow new life. Now, my mum and I follow the lead consultant into a room at St Mary's Hospital, to find out his diagnosis and the next steps. Reality doesn’t seem to be unfolding as I’d imagined; the sonographers at our last appointment said not to worry. But the clinician who just performed my latest scan seems to have tears in her reddened eyes; I have a strange urge to get up and hug her. The phrase ‘life can turn on a dime’ never seemed truer. In the room we just came from, my mum and I were laughing at the baby mischievously kicking its feet around on the screen; and I’ve just told my mum the name I’ve chosen. As we start to take our seats before the clinical team, we’re still discussing our plans to go and give my grandma the good news that evening. I should have known what was coming from the box of tissues on the table, and the fact that we aren’t sitting in a regular doctor’s office, but a private side room with comfy sofas…I guess we only see what we want to when the truth is too painful. After the abnormality was identified on the 12-week ultrasound last week, Matt and I had put our full faith in a positive outcome, but it seems it’s not to be. I’m told that if I were to proceed with the pregnancy and hope for a miracle, it would not only continue to endanger the baby’s life but risk my own too. It is suggested that I start the abortion process within the next few days. (I will later find out that the term generally preferred in this kind of helpless situation is Termination for Medical Reasons; TFMR. Though I can at least acknowledge that, in light of the Roe vs Wade reversal and its repercussions, even my predicament has allowed me to exercise some choice. In other countries, many would have no choice but to continue and put their own lives in danger. At the same time, the ‘think yourself lucky’ mindset isn’t much comfort in these scenarios.) A short while later, my mum and I compose ourselves, leave and head into Costa, sort of bereft and barely present, in that surreal, quiet calm that comes after an intense period of crying. I feel tiny and childlike as my mum asks, What would you like? Pick anything you want. You’d think I would feel too sick to eat but my blood sugar must have dropped significantly, because I silently devour a double chocolate muffin with my Chai latte like my life depends on it. On the way home, I go to a yin yoga class and lie on the mat with tears silently streaming down my face.
A week later, I’m wrapped in blankets in bed, watching Men in Black on my laptop as I eat the comfortingly cheesy jacket potato the nurses have brought for me and the Nutella biscuits Matt went and bought while I was gone. It’s been 24 hours since I’ve been allowed to eat, so everything tastes amazing. I just want to feel safe and cared for right now; and this film always takes me back to childhood. It’s funny how Will Smith uses his gadget to make people forget what they’ve just experienced; I’m watching this film to do the same thing, escaping what I’m not yet ready to process. I’ve been through such unfathomable pain, shock and sorrow the last few days that right now, I mostly just feel relief that this part is over. In fact, even being told I was going into surgery was a relief, after it was finally confirmed, following an excruciating internal examination at 3 o'clock in the morning, that the abortion pills they gave me hadn’t fully worked. Because at least I’d finally be unconscious under general anaesthetic and unaware of what was happening to, and in, my body. (I couldn’t stop wondering how many women and girls in neighbouring rooms were having to endure this on their own, without a loved one or friend there throughout.) And so, the relief is now mixed with intense gratitude for having woken up in the operating theatre in one piece, returning through the doors of the hospital ward to be reunited with a desperately worried Matt ten minutes ago. After an extended hospital stay, I’m elated that I can soon go home to see my dog, Cash, and squeeze him.
Less than 48 hours after coming out of hospital, I’m in Spain, in tears in the shower. This trip was meant to be our babymoon. I’m not crying from sadness, though; I already moved through some grief on the flight over here (listening to Britney Spears’ audiobook and hearing about her miscarriage probably wasn’t wise, particularly after a two-hour sleep). This time, I’m crying with joy. Of course, my hormones are still all over the place, so I recognise this rollercoaster of emotions as biological, but it’s also the amazement at the duality of life; the realisation that light is never too far from darkness. The transition from the horror of writhing around on that hospital bathroom floor enduring the worst pain of my life two days ago, feeling utterly unsafe in my body and pleading for it to end, to now being in my favourite place in the world, where I lived in my early twenties. Remembering who I am after feeling so lost. There’s nothing like a devastating fertility-related experience to make a woman feel unworthy, no matter how strongly she believes that we are not born solely to reproduce. How can women be made to feel for our whole lives that our primary purpose is to further the human race, yet we feel such shame and loneliness when some pregnancies inevitably don’t make it through? But at this moment, I feel safe in my body again, as the warm shower soothes me and I enjoy the blissful feeling that comes after a day in the sunshine and swimming in the sea. I know it isn’t all over; I’m aware that darker days are probably still to come, once I return home and attempt to return to normality. Instead of being on the post-babymoon countdown to the due date, it’s going to be like I was never pregnant at all. Like it was all just a dream. I’m not naive about how difficult that’s probably going to feel, after spending two or three months preparing for my whole world to be flipped upside down by this new little person. But for now, I enjoy this moment for what it is, seeing that life can be beautiful again. I feel such gratitude for what my body has got me through and so happy I now get to reward it.
Following a month of this continuous rollercoaster of emotions after getting back to everyday life, Matt and I are in the Old Chapel at Manchester Crematorium. I wear a necklace Matt has bought for me containing the birth sign our baby would have had; Taurus. I’m surrounded by rows and rows of other grieving would-be mothers. I look around and reflect on how one in four women experience pregnancy loss; this is the only time we ever come together, the faces behind the statistics. Like me, they have been accompanied to the memorial, either by partners, friends or family members. Yet there is an automatic, unspoken bond among this sisterhood. We are here to support these little souls through to the next life together, walking to the front in turn to light a candle, lay flowers and stand for a few moments before the impossibly miniature coffins, before the curtain is drawn across them. The cremation service is beautiful. The pastor leads such a respectful, moving ceremony as we sit united in grief. I feel so moved by this connection between us all; bound together by our pursuit of something that ended before it had begun.
The Old Chapel at Manchester Crematorium, just after the baby memorial service
Of course, it takes work to keep leaning into life and being present to the grieving process. Even if you’re consciously trying to make peace with what’s happened to help yourself try and move forward, believing that everything happens for a reason (because what alternative is there?), it can still feel so unfair at times. Even if you’ve spent a lot of time cultivating a worldview that life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. Even though you know it’s not really about fairness, or worthiness. Even if you’ve consciously committed to carving out time and space for allowing all emotions to come up when they need to, believing that exhausting every ounce of sadness will allow you to find peace more quickly, the grief will still get you in ways you didn’t expect. The human experience isn’t about neatly ejecting tears like you’re a Baby Born doll. You have to be ready for everything you may not be prepared for, managing your expectations of how it will go. You expect grief to be all highs and lows; but much of the time it’s not that dramatic. It can also be very banal, feeling low and dispirited enough to know you’re not at your best, but not so low that you can’t go on functioning in everyday life. And that’s the state you try and cope in until it hits you again one day and you realise that actually, you still need to remember to go gentle on yourself.
I initially got very drunk for the first time in almost a year not long after the termination. It resulted in a very teary and regretful hangover at putting my poor body through more pain (not to mention being sick on my own shoes). It kind of served a purpose at the time; I tried not to guilt myself too much as I knew I was coping as best I could, trying to numb myself when I was mentally drained. I was also trying to regain my sense of self in some way; I was with friends and had just wanted to talk openly about what I’d been through. WE JUST DON’T TALK ABOUT IT ENOUGH IN EVERYDAY LIFE; pregnancy loss is still so taboo. However, I realised the slightly self-destructive approach wasn’t going to work for me going forward. Luckily, I had visited a very witchy shop in Spain to buy suitably spiritual trinkets and incense and oracle cards, to add to a dedicated meditation space I want to create in my spare room. I include a crystal two of my best friends send me in a care package. So I meditate and write about my experiences daily, and my local yoga classes are a godsend for coming back to my body. My training in somatic processing has taught me how pain and trauma shows up in the body and how to tune into my physical experiences. I suddenly have a new understanding of the term ‘waves of grief’. It feels like a pulsating in my muscles; a constant tensing and releasing; my body’s fight to be acknowledged, my soul’s rightful protesting not to be suppressed. I also create a Spotify playlist to listen to during my stillness practices and in the bath, so I can allow my emotions to come up and be fully experienced. The track that usually gets me the most is Somewhere Over the Rainbow, by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.
January 2024. I’m back on that same hilltop in the Scottish Highlands. It had to be this spot. Our journey here this time wasn’t quite so straightforward; I don’t just mean that metaphorically, but quite literally, as a severe storm has wrecked the entire forest. Matt, Cash and I had to climb over, and crawl under, fallen pine trees the whole way up to the top. Such symmetry, you couldn’t make it up; the ravaged surroundings mirror the beating our hearts have taken. I feel humbled as I stand before this vast, majestic expanse once again, on top of the world yet about to perform an earth-shattering task. Trying to take it all in, I feel as small as an ant, or a star in the sky among a whole constellation. It’s isolating and at the same time comforting, feeling such a part of this whole tapestry of land. I sit and meditate, grounding into the earth around me and centring myself. I thank myself from a year ago for getting me to this point. I feel only the slightest sense of trepidation now, as I approach my backpack and take out the velvet pouch containing the little box of ashes, wondering how it will feel to release them into the heavens from this celestial vantage point. Matt and I hug, I scatter the ashes and suddenly, a wind picks up and carries them; it’s the sort of magical, inconceivable thing you might hope for in order to romanticise the occasion later. All we can do is gasp in awe at the perfection of this captivating dance, as the ashes appear to swirl around like twinkling fairy dust and become intertwined with the atmosphere. As they disappear, I just feel so at peace; it may not have been your time to join us on earth but I’ve never felt so sure that we are all part of creation and there is no separation. There’s no neat and tidy ending and I still have a lot of grieving to do, but I’ll do it knowing our souls are eternally bonded and finally giving myself permission to love myself more.
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If you’ve been affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, please feel free to reach out to me on socials or email hello@sameshitdifferentbrain.com.
Support services for pregnancy loss include:
https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/
https://www.tommys.org/baby-loss-support
https://www.sayinggoodbye.org/
https://www.childbereavementuk.org/
https://www.cruse.org.uk/
https://www.sands.org.uk/
I originally told this story to a live audience at Heard Storytelling’s International Women’s Day 2024 event. After my talk, host and co-founder Caroline Dyer discussed the importance of continuing to raise awareness over the policing of women’s bodies. Pregnant people in many other countries are still unable to access abortion services, while women in the UK can still be - and are being - prosecuted over abortion, in 2024.
Here are some key organisations supporting pregnant people’s right to choose (including those in other countries who need to travel abroad for an abortion):
https://www.asn.org.uk/
https://www.sistersupporter.co.uk/
https://www.msichoices.org/
https://www.tommys.org/
https://abortionrights.org.uk/
https://www.womensequality.org.uk/prochoice
https://humanists.uk/campaigns/public-ethical-issues/sexual-and-reproductive-rights/
*If you’re interested in learning more about breathwork and somatic healing, check out the incredible work of Keli Carpenter and Briony Gunson, the amazing women I trained under.
